Posted on 07/04/2009 5:35:25 PM PDT by sionnsar
In 2009, portability is the default state of affairs with computers, since laptops outsell desktop PCs. But in the 1960s, the typical computer was a room-filling mainframe; minicomputers, which were merely the size of a refrigerator, were the small computers of the day.
Which didn’t mean that folks weren’t craving the concept of mobile computing even back then. I was just rummaging through Google’s invaluable archive of several decades of Computerworld, and came across a short item from March 1968 on carrying cases for the typewriter-like Teletype terminals that were then used to interface with mainframes and minis. Anderson Jacobson sold the cases both separately and as a package with a Teletype pre-installed. (Sadly, the Computerworld story doesn’t say how much you had to pay for one of these portable Teletype systems. Maybe if you had to ask, you couldn’t afford one.)
One model of Teletype weighed a trim 75 pounds in its case; another, was an even more featherweight 65 pounds. The cases offered optional wheels in case you wanted to roll your Teletype along. The gent in the photo below didn’t need the wheels–I wonder if he tried to store his Teletype below the seat in front of him when he traveled by airplane?
Of course, putting a Teletype in a case didn’t really give you access to a mainframe’s mighty computing power anywhere; the Teletype had to be plugged in and connected via a dial-up modem (with an acoustic coupler that attached to your telephone’s handset). What it did was help you move a big, bulky piece of equipment from place to place with a little less difficulty. But the yen to go mobile was there. Wonder how the guy in the photo would have reacted if you’d shown him even the most mundane notebook from 2009?
Bit significance depends on if you system used Little or Big Endian alignment. Started with and old Honeywell 2020 in college, all programming done on Hollerith 80 column cards. Hated it when you dropped your program of 1-2 thousand cards and they weren’t numbered like you could do with the later IBM punch card machines, of which at that time were in short supply. First remote terminal was an old Texas Instruments hardcopy thermal printer. I think it was a model 300, don’t remember anymore, had a 300 baud acousta coupler that was about circa 1982-3 time frame I would log into customers field test systems for DEC’s testing of 11780’s in a cluster environment. Pretty heady days in the computer industry at that point.
Now days most of our code is written in foreign countries and who knows what type of phone home code they are slipping in and even our DOD uses that crap. I’m coming to the close of my career in the industry. But those 70’s and 80’s were great days in the business.
Seeing those old machines brought back a lot of memories.
Those Kaypros had way too big of a screen!!! However, I interfaced my Osborne with a 12 inch amber monitor, just to keep ahead of them Kaypro'ers... What fun!!!
Ronnie was still President of a respectable USA, then, too... (sob)
Yes. Did they use punched tape, cassette or floppy? If something is going to stop working it is probably the item with moving parts. I'm not sure how good the magnetic media was or is. I doubt they ever imagined that someone would still be trying to boot-up 30 years in the future. Do you think you'll remember how to make them work? I think my brother-in-law owned one, I remember drooling over it.
OK. OK. I'll bite.
what kinda snacks?
At the time I thought “Who the hell is going to need these things?” 1Gig? Oh well, I got em free. I called some friends who pointed me in the right direction and sold them for $900 a piece. I thought “Those things are stupid”.
And today I can buy an 16gig flash drive,that is portable, or 80 bucks!
sorry need to ammend. That is $80 for the 16gig mini flash for my phone.
You are correct
Do rocks live as long you have?
I started working at GTE Data Services in 1977 as a computer operator. We had Honeywell DPS 66/60 mainframes that filled an entire room. The ‘hard drives’ were as big as washing machines and had what looked like large LPs stacked on top of each other. Data could also be stored on tapes, paper tapes or card decks.
This was considered the “time-sharing” part of the business. GTE Telephone Operations employees could log into the mainframe via a ‘dumb’ terminal (3270) and a dial-up modem at 300 baud. When they went to 1200 baud everyone thought that it was the best. Thirty-second response time was considered good. This was WAY before anyone ever heard of a PC. Now there is more computing power in a credit card sized calculator than one mainframe tower.
OMG, I went down the same path. In the racket even today. I found out I was a lousy programmer, but a great trouble-shooter of other people's problems. It taught me patience and low cunning.
Thanks to whoever provided that link to the "adventure" games. One of my favorite time sinks, along with the ascii-graphic "rogue" games. I even have versions on my Palm Pilot.
I'd like to try my hand at some massive online game like Warcraft, but I can't bring myself to play all night, and then put in a day's work in the mundane world.
Under my reloading bench, in a box, wrapped in canvas, are two (2) Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 100 laptop computers. They still work.
Radio Shack had a somewhat tarnished reputation when it came to computers but the Model 100 was the first laptop on the market. I remember when President Reagan met with Gorbachev in Iceland. I saw two reporters sitting in a hallway, busily typing their stories on their M-100 laptops. The computer had a ‘fair’ word processor and a built-in modem that transmitted data at a whopping 300 baud. All that and it would run almost all day on four AA-batteries!
Working for IBM in the latter days of the Kennedy Administration, we had clients all over downtown who were gradually weaning themselves from the old unit-record equipment (sorters, interpreters, and accounting machines) by leasing 1401s programmed to do the exact same things.
Of course our larger customers, such as the leading banks, already had 1410s and 7070’s. But there was still some tube equipment around, including a 709, a couple of 650s, and a few 604s.
Some of our IBM accounts were in a bank building in which GE computer sales were on the ground floor. It amused us IBM field service types to walk by their showroom and see IBM card equipment off on the side being used as I/O.
Instead of the standard IBM dark gray textured vinyl covering, GE’s IBM units were this bright, perky, ugly, salmon color.
>>I don’t know, in the geek world it almost makes you a god<<
Based on the stories here, it makes me a young pup! (LOL)
.......I thank the late Adam Osborne.....
Regarding the Adam.....
Does any one remember the Adam? They tried to promote it by holding a whistling contest...... in Arizona I think.
rgds
After the EMP attack you will be a computer god!
A lot of the Ham Radio guys picked up either this 1400FD or the little Tandy 102 for packet radio. Wanting 100% PC compatibility I chose the 1400. And I still use it sometimes, it's the only thing I have with a real RS-232 port.
The first computer I ran (SuperNova,1971), we lost all power about once a week. In order to recover, I had to “toggle in” about one hundred 16-bit instructions using 16 toggle switches to boot the computer up. Those instructions taught the computer how to read from the first sector of the disk (10MEG swappable hard drive!) which contained enough information to tell the machine how to read the rest of the disk and retrieve the remaining part of the operating system. (This is why it is called boot-strapping the computer) Of course, a single bit of those first instructions being wrong would cause total failure.
I still miss having the 16 switches (plus about a dozen more) on the front panel of a “real” computer. I also miss the comforting rows of “blinking lights”, one for the “address” and one for the “instruction” there, that constantly changed as the computer was running, as well as the ability to “Pause” the computer at any time and step through instructions. For some reason a computer doesn’t seem “real” to me without that ability.
I have also punched in octal, but that was a couple years later, on a PDP machine, as well as years after that on a CPM computer.
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